personal questions with tact and masterful evasion, and Archer was in awe of him, even if he knew it was going to blow up in his face some day.
“What if you meet someone?” was his first question the night after he got back from Paris. They were in Rex’s home office, lounging on his overly comfortable leather sofa, drinking scotch which tasted like ass, but made Archer feel far above his station in life. “What if you fall in love? Do you think the world’s ready for a queer governor?”
“I’m not going to worry about that right now,” Rex told him. “I won’t be the world’s first gay political leader. I’m just not ready to make it my platform right now.”
He sounded a lot like their father—at least, what Archer could remember of him. He and their mother had been killed by a drunk driver on a road trip in California when Archer was six. Rex was already an adult—Archer the late in life accident who’d come along when Rex was twenty-two. His mother thought he was menopause for the first four months, then he started kicking, and life changed. Except it didn’t. Archer was born and handed off to caregivers, and his parents went on with their gentle glide into retirement. Archer had private schools and nannies and personal tutors. He had weekends with his brother, but he never really had parents.
At least, not until they died.
Rex had stepped up in a big way, and more than anything, Archer’s criticisms came from a place of desperation to protect him because that’s what Rex had done for him his entire life. He knew first-hand the cruelty of people who lashed out from a place of ignorance, and he didn’t want to think about what it might do to Rex when it was coming from thousands of mean, ugly, anonymous figures hiding behind screens.
Before Rex took office, Archer had been too busy burying himself in numbers and theory to give a single shit about social media. He wasn’t sure how the hell Rex managed, and he wasn’t sure how the hell he was supposed to have a real job or a personal life in the midst of all this—and he wasn’t even the one in office.
“How bad is this going to be?” he asked Katerina through the crack in his door. He had his trousers halfway zipped, and was staring at the row of boring shirts in different shades of white.
“It’s a luncheon, minimal press,” she said. “It’s not heavy-hitting news. This is about the new LGBT protection laws.”
Which was probably why Rex wanted him there. He couldn’t be out—not yet. Not now. Maybe not ever. But Archer could embrace his own sexuality with fervor, and it would fuel Rex’s liberal campaign. Governor Rex’s Gay Kid Brother. He could see the headlines now and it made his stomach twist on itself because it made him a pawn in his brother’s political game. And there was no doubt Rex loved him, but there was no doubt Rex would use him if it helped his eventual reelection.
Archer turned his back on Katerina and moved to the bathroom to wash his face and run the comb through his hair. He looked a little thinner, and a little more tired than he had when he left his little flat in Paris. In the days he’d been back, he survived on take out from the deli on the corner, tap water, and warm beer. He missed his morning walks down empty side streets—far away from the hustle and bustle of tourists. He missed his sweet neighbors, and the scent of heavy rain in the air which was nothing like home. He missed good coffee and fragrant cafés and student protests in the streets. Hell, he even missed dodging vacationers crowding around the bouquinistes filling their bags with glossy photo books of Marilyn Monroe and cheaply made gargoyle candle holders, wearing bags around their necks to protect themselves from the imaginary threat of pickpockets.
Without being at his lab, without a solid plan about what was coming next, he felt lost. He finished his Ph.D. and the uncertainty of the future was staring him in the face. And then his brother called.
“Come home. Just for a little while,” Rex said. “I just…I know you have some time to decide what you’re doing next, and I miss you. You still have your apartment and maybe we can talk about it.”